The Arab Spring and "the War on Terror"

[TheAuthority]

On 06/09/2021 at 09:20, HanoiVillan said:

This is fantastic:

It's absolutely worth reading, and provides some much needed historical and geographical perspective to the withdrawal and to women's rights in Afghanista. You should read the whole thing, but I've put some excerpts in the spoiler tags (because long):

  Hide contents

• On a previous attempt to bring women's rights to rural Afghanistan:

'In 1979, when Shakira was an infant, Communists seized power in Kabul and tried to launch a female-literacy program in Helmand—a province the size of West Virginia, with few girls’ schools. Tribal elders and landlords refused. In the villagers’ retelling, the traditional way of life in Sangin was smashed overnight, because outsiders insisted on bringing women’s rights to the valley. “Our culture could not accept sending their girls outside to school,” Shakira recalled. “It was this way before my father’s time, before my grandfather’s time.” When the authorities began forcing girls to attend classes at gunpoint, a rebellion erupted, led by armed men calling themselves the mujahideen. In their first operation, they kidnapped all the schoolteachers in the valley, many of whom supported girls’ education, and slit their throats. The next day, the government arrested tribal elders and landlords on the suspicion that they were bankrolling the mujahideen. These community leaders were never seen again.

Tanks from the Soviet Union crossed the border to shore up the Communist government—and to liberate women. Soon, Afghanistan was basically split in two. In the countryside, where young men were willing to die fighting the imposition of new ways of life—including girls’ schools and land reform—young women remained unseen. In the cities, the Soviet-backed government banned child marriage and granted women the right to choose their partners. Girls enrolled in schools and universities in record numbers, and by the early eighties women held parliamentary seats and even the office of Vice-President.'

• On America's choice of allies:

'Pazaro, a woman from a nearby village, recalled, “We didn’t have a single night of peace. Our terror had a name, and it was Amir Dado.”

The first time Shakira saw Dado, through the judas of her parents’ front gate, he was in a pickup truck, trailed by a dozen armed men, parading through the village “as if he were the President.” Dado, a wealthy fruit vender turned mujahideen commander, with a jet-black beard and a prodigious belly, had begun attacking rival strongmen even before the Soviets’ defeat. He hailed from the upper Sangin Valley, where his tribe, the Alikozais, had held vast feudal plantations for centuries. The lower valley was the home of the Ishaqzais, the poor tribe to which Shakira belonged. Shakira watched as Dado’s men went from door to door, demanding a “tax” and searching homes. A few weeks later, the gunmen returned, ransacking her family’s living room while she cowered in a corner. Never before had strangers violated the sanctity of her home, and she felt as if she’d been stripped naked and thrown into the street.

By the early nineties, the Communist government of Afghanistan, now bereft of Soviet support, was crumbling. In 1992, Lashkar Gah fell to a faction of mujahideen. Shakira had an uncle living there, a Communist with little time for the mosque and a weakness for Pashtun tunes. He’d recently married a young woman, Sana, who’d escaped a forced betrothal to a man four times her age. The pair had started a new life in Little Moscow, a Lashkar Gah neighborhood that Sana called “the land where women have freedom”—but, when the mujahideen took over, they were forced to flee to Pan Killay.

Shakira was tending the cows one evening when Dado’s men surrounded her with guns. “Where’s your uncle?” one of them shouted. The fighters stormed into the house—followed by Sana’s spurned fiancé. “She’s the one!” he said. The gunmen dragged Sana away. When Shakira’s other uncles tried to intervene, they were arrested. The next day, Sana’s husband turned himself in to Dado’s forces, begging to be taken in her place. Both were sent to the strongman’s religious court and sentenced to death.

[...]

One night in 2003, Shakira was jolted awake by the voices of strange men. She rushed to cover herself. When she ran to the living room, she saw, with panic, the muzzles of rifles being pointed at her. The men were larger than she’d ever seen, and they were in uniform. These are the Americans, she realized, in awe. Some Afghans were with them, scrawny men with Kalashnikovs and checkered scarves. A man with an enormous beard was barking orders: Amir Dado.

[...]

Nearly every person Shakira knew had a story about Dado. Once, his fighters demanded that two young men either pay a tax or join his private militia, which he maintained despite holding his official post. When they refused, his fighters beat them to death, stringing their bodies up from a tree. A villager recalled, “We went to cut them down, and they had been sliced open, their stomachs coming out.” In another village, Dado’s forces went from house to house, executing people suspected of being Taliban; an elderly scholar who’d never belonged to the movement was shot dead.

Shakira was bewildered by the Americans’ choice of allies. “Was this their plan?” she asked me. “Did they come to bring peace, or did they have other aims?”'

[...]

In March, 2003, U.S. soldiers visited Sangin’s governor—Dado’s brother—to discuss refurbishing a school and a health clinic. Upon leaving, their convoy came under fire, and Staff Sergeant Jacob Frazier and Sergeant Orlando Morales became the first American combat fatalities in Helmand. U.S. personnel suspected that the culprit was not the Taliban but Dado—a suspicion confirmed to me by one of the warlord’s former commanders, who said that his boss had engineered the attack to keep the Americans reliant on him. Nonetheless, when Dado’s forces claimed to have nabbed the true assassin—an ex-Taliban conscript named Mullah Jalil—the Americans dispatched Jalil to Guantánamo. Unaccountably, this happened despite the fact that, according to Jalil’s classified Guantánamo file, U.S. officials knew that Jalil had been fingered merely to “cover for” the fact that Dado’s forces had been “involved with the ambush.”

[...] the United Nations began agitating for Dado’s removal. The U.S. repeatedly blocked the effort, and a guide for the U.S. Marine Corps argued that although Dado was “far from being a Jeffersonian Democrat” his form of rough justice was “the time-tested solution for controlling rebellious Pashtuns.”'

• A 'double tap' air strike:

'Sometimes, even fleeing did not guarantee safety. During one battle, Abdul Salam, an uncle of Shakira’s husband, took refuge in a friend’s home. After the fighting ended, he visited a mosque to offer prayers. A few Taliban were there, too. A coalition air strike killed almost everyone inside. The next day, mourners gathered for funerals; a second strike killed a dozen more people. Among the bodies returned to Pan Killay were those of Abdul Salam, his cousin, and his three nephews, aged six to fifteen.'

• The toll of coalition forces on this one woman's acquaintances:

'There was Muhammad, a fifteen-year-old cousin: he was killed by a buzzbuzzak, a drone, while riding his motorcycle through the village with a friend. “That sound was everywhere,” Shakira recalled. “When we heard it, the children would start to cry, and I could not console them.”

Muhammad Wali, an adult cousin: Villagers were instructed by coalition forces to stay indoors for three days as they conducted an operation, but after the second day drinking water had been depleted and Wali was forced to venture out. He was shot.

Khan Muhammad, a seven-year-old cousin: His family was fleeing a clash by car when it mistakenly neared a coalition position; the car was strafed, killing him.

Bor Agha, a twelve-year-old cousin: He was taking an evening walk when he was killed by fire from an Afghan National Police base. The next morning, his father visited the base, in shock and looking for answers, and was told that the boy had been warned before not to stray near the installation. “Their commander gave the order to target him,” his father recalled.

Amanullah, a sixteen-year-old cousin: He was working the land when he was targeted by an Afghan Army sniper. No one provided an explanation, and the family was too afraid to approach the Army base and ask.

Ahmed, an adult cousin: After a long day in the fields, he was headed home, carrying a hot plate, when he was struck down by coalition forces. The family believes that the foreigners mistook the hot plate for an I.E.D.

Niamatullah, Ahmed’s brother: He was harvesting opium when a firefight broke out nearby; as he tried to flee, he was gunned down by a buzzbuzzak.

Gul Ahmed, an uncle of Shakira’s husband: He wanted to get a head start on his day, so he asked his sons to bring his breakfast to the fields. When they arrived, they found his body. Witnesses said that he’d encountered a coalition patrol. The soldiers “left him here, like an animal,” Shakira said.

Entire branches of Shakira’s family tree, from the uncles who used to tell her stories to the cousins who played with her in the caves, vanished. In all, she lost sixteen family members. I wondered if it was the same for other families in Pan Killay. I sampled a dozen households at random in the village, and made similar inquiries in other villages, to insure that Pan Killay was no outlier. For each family, I documented the names of the dead, cross-checking cases with death certificates and eyewitness testimony. On average, I found, each family lost ten to twelve civilians in what locals call the American War.'

• Then some more violence in 2019:

'But in 2019, as the U.S. was holding talks with Taliban leaders in Doha, Qatar, the Afghan government and American forces moved jointly on Sangin one last time. That January, they launched perhaps the most devastating assault that the valley witnessed in the entire war. Shakira and other villagers fled for the desert, but not everyone could escape. Ahmed Noor Mohammad, who owned a pay-phone business, decided to wait to evacuate, because his twin sons were ill. His family went to bed to the sound of distant artillery. That night, an American bomb slammed into the room where the twin boys were sleeping, killing them. A second bomb hit an adjacent room, killing Mohammad’s father and many others, eight of them children.

The next day, at the funeral, another air strike killed six mourners. In a nearby village, a gunship struck down three children. The following day, four more children were shot dead. Elsewhere in Sangin, an air strike hit an Islamic school, killing a child. A week later, twelve guests at a wedding were killed in an air raid.

After the bombing, Mohammad’s brother travelled to Kandahar to report the massacres to the United Nations and to the Afghan government. When no justice was forthcoming, he joined the Taliban.'

• Some thoughts on the situation of women:

'Until recently, the Kabul that Sadat fled often felt like a different country, even a different century, from Sangin. The capital had become a city of hillside lights, shimmering wedding halls, and neon billboards that was joyously crowded with women: mothers browsed markets, girls walked in pairs from school, police officers patrolled in hijabs, office workers carried designer handbags. The gains these women experienced during the American War—and have now lost—are staggering, and hard to fathom when considered against the austere hamlets of Helmand: the Afghan parliament had a proportion of women similar to that of the U.S. Congress, and about a quarter of university students were female. Thousands of women in Kabul are understandably terrified that the Taliban have not evolved. In late August, I spoke by phone to a dermatologist who was bunkered in her home. She has studied in multiple countries, and runs a large clinic employing a dozen women. “I’ve worked too hard to get here,” she told me. “I studied too long, I made my own business, I created my own clinic. This was my life’s dream.” She had not stepped outdoors in two weeks.

The Taliban takeover has restored order to the conservative countryside while plunging the comparatively liberal streets of Kabul into fear and hopelessness. This reversal of fates brings to light the unspoken premise of the past two decades: if U.S. troops kept battling the Taliban in the countryside, then life in the cities could blossom. This may have been a sustainable project—the Taliban were unable to capture cities in the face of U.S. airpower. But was it just? Can the rights of one community depend, in perpetuity, on the deprivation of rights in another? In Sangin, whenever I brought up the question of gender, village women reacted with derision. “They are giving rights to Kabul women, and they are killing women here,” Pazaro said. “Is this justice?” Marzia, from Pan Killay, told me, “This is not ‘women’s rights’ when you are killing us, killing our brothers, killing our fathers.” Khalida, from a nearby village, said, “The Americans did not bring us any rights. They just came, fought, killed, and left.”

The women in Helmand disagree among themselves about what rights they should have. Some yearn for the old village rules to crumble—they wish to visit the market or to picnic by the canal without sparking innuendo or worse. Others cling to more traditional interpretations. “Women and men aren’t equal,” Shakira told me. “They are each made by God, and they each have their own role, their own strengths that the other doesn’t have.” More than once, as her husband lay in an opium stupor, she fantasized about leaving him. Yet Nilofar is coming of age, and a divorce could cast shame on the family, harming her prospects. Through friends, Shakira hears stories of dissolute cities filled with broken marriages and prostitution. “Too much freedom is dangerous, because people won’t know the limits,” she said.

All the women I met in Sangin, though, seemed to agree that their rights, whatever they might entail, cannot flow from the barrel of a gun—and that Afghan communities themselves must improve the conditions of women. Some villagers believe that they possess a powerful cultural resource to wage that struggle: Islam itself. “The Taliban are saying women cannot go outside, but there is actually no Islamic rule like this,” Pazaro told me. “As long as we are covered, we should be allowed.” I asked a leading Helmandi Taliban scholar where in Islam was it stipulated that women cannot go to the market or attend school. He admitted, somewhat chagrined, that this was not an actual Islamic injunction. “It’s the culture in the village, not Islam,” he said. “The people there have these beliefs about women, and we follow them.” Just as Islam offers fairer templates for marriage, divorce, and inheritance than many tribal and village norms, these women hope to marshal their faith—the shared language across their country’s many divides—to carve out greater freedoms.'

 

We keep seeing 'women's rights' in Afghanistan through a narrow lens - what can they wear? Can they go to school or run a business? - without even considering whether a woman would or could ever feel free if her brothers and sons and uncles are dying in airstrikes. It's not that the former isn't important, but that by the constant death and destruction in the countryside, we drove Afghans to prioritise the latter. Something to consider, perhaps, for those who wanted to continue the war in the name of women's rights.

It's almost as if the Project for a New American Century think tank was wrong . The PNAC was directly responsible for the past 20 years of war in Iraq & Afghanistan.

Of the twenty-five people who signed PNAC's founding statement of principles, ten went on to serve in the Bush administration. They included  Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, John Bolton and Paul Wolfowitz. ) I think Condaleeza was involved somehow but maybe I'm mis-remembering.

Is it little wonder that the US won't support or recognize the ICC - ALL of these neo-cons should be in jail. The irony is that Bill Kristol founded the PNAC and he is now a darling of the Dems because he hates Trump 

Well, it will be interesting to watching the Chinese have a go at empiring for the next 50 years - they can't possibly make as many dumb mistakes as the US.

[ml1dch]

This is the sort of thing that once upon a time would have led to resignation in disgrace 

 

 

[Follyfoot]

Am I missing something, the fella who hacked that Tory MP to death a few weeks ago has pleaded not guilty to murder and not guilty to preparing an act of terrorism. I would imagine the latter could be argued but somewhat confused by the first plea

[sidcow]

4 minutes ago, Follyfoot said:

Am I missing something, the fella who hacked that Tory MP to death a few weeks ago has pleaded not guilty to murder and not guilty to preparing an act of terrorism. I would imagine the latter could be argued but somewhat confused by the first plea

I expect he will argue that it's not murder as he's a war casualty or God told him to do it so it can't be or something like that. 

[Chindie]

Part of a insanity defence (which won't work) or he wants the trial to get publicity for the cause he's done this for 

Either way he's going to prison for the rest of his life.

[SuperTed]

9 minutes ago, Follyfoot said:

Am I missing something, the fella who hacked that Tory MP to death a few weeks ago has pleaded not guilty to murder and not guilty to preparing an act of terrorism. I would imagine the latter could be argued but somewhat confused by the first plea

Diminished responsibility perhaps? Defence may plead this in some cases

[KentVillan]

What do we think about Shamima Begum?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-64731007.amp

Quote

Shamima Begum has lost her challenge over the decision to deprive her of British citizenship because she is a threat to national security. 
 

Mr Justice Jay told the semi-secret court dealing with her case that her appeal had been fully dismissed. 

The decision means the 23-year-old remains barred from returning to the UK and stuck in a camp in northern Syria. 

 

Ms Begum was 15 years old when she travelled to join the self-styled Islamic State group in 2015. 

She went on to have three children, all of whom have died, after marrying a fighter with the group. 

In 2019, the then Home Secretary Sajid Javid stripped her of her British citizenship, preventing her coming home, and leaving her detained as an IS supporter in a camp. 

 

The Special Immigration Appeals Commission has ruled that decision, taken after ministers received national security advice about Ms Begum's threat to the UK, had been lawful.

 

[Davkaus]

I wonder if it ends up in the ECHR next. Does the UK have the right to say she's got Bangladeshi citizenship when Bangladesh denies it

The idea of leaving someone stateless and washing our hands of them is problematic, but in this case, play stupid games, win stupid prizes.

If she does manage to take it a step further and somehow win her legal claim, I think her reward is an immediate arrest and prosecution for terrorist offences, so I'm surprised she's been taking it this far. 

[Chindie]

Making people stateless is wrong.

I don't think anyone has a great deal of sympathy for her, she's clearly been a moron and reaped what she has sown. Even accepting she was a teenager at the time and there's some argument that intelligence services actually were complicit in her being ultimately convinced to take that final step, you've got to be categorically stupid to think it's a good move, or you had to have had genuine conviction in it. 

However even with all that, governments shouldn't be able to wash their hands of their people. She's our problem. She should be punished by our system as what she is - a British person.

[StefanAVFC]

I struggle to have sympathy for her but she's a British citizen who made a stupid decision whilst being said British citizen. We don't have the right to say she isn't British anymore and pretend she isn't our problem. And the precedent it sets, that the government of the day can make you stateless is scarily dystopian.

1 hour ago, Davkaus said:

I wonder if it ends up in the ECHR next.

I hope not. The right wing grift will be taken to new levels with us actually probably leaving the ECHR this time.

[Davkaus]

5 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

I struggle to have sympathy for her but she's a British citizen who made a stupid decision whilst being said British citizen. We don't have the right to say she isn't British anymore and pretend she isn't our problem

 

Morally, I probably agree with this, she's not only a British citizen, but although it's not a distinction recognised in law, she's primarily British and our responsibility. Legally though, she's a Bangladeshi citizen, although they're refusing to recognise their own law because it's inconvenient, and she's not challenging that because she doesn't want to go there.

[tonyh29]

its interesting as at the time she she was stripped of her British Citizenship , she would have been a Bangladeshi citizen under the bloodline rule , or at least that was the argument upheld originally 

Now she is over 21 and hadn't (presumably) made any moves to confirm her Bangladeshi citizenship  she is technically stateless , so does her citizenship status apply from the time she had it removed at the age of 19 or now ?

 

[Davkaus]

1 minute ago, tonyh29 said:

 

Now she is over 21 and hadn't (presumably) made any moves to confirm her Bangladeshi citizenship  she is technically stateless , so does her citizenship status apply from the time she had it removed at the age of 19 or now ?

 

As I understand it, there's nothing to confirm or apply for, she's a Bangladeshi citizen, and that's that, but regardless of the specifics of this case, it does seem that it creates this bizarre situation where if there is a person of dual citizenship involved in or suspected or terrorism related offences, it becomes a race to strip them of citizenship ASAP so you're not left as the last country holding the bag.

[tonyh29]

5 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

As I understand it, there's nothing to confirm or apply for, she's a Bangladeshi citizen, and that's that, but regardless of the specifics of this case, it does seem that it creates this bizarre situation where if there is a person of dual citizenship involved in or suspected or terrorism related offences, it becomes a race to strip them of citizenship ASAP so you're not left as the last country holding the bag.

I read here that after the age of 21 the bloodline citizenship expires unless you specifically apply otherwise  , but i don't know how accurate this statement is 

 

Quote

Expert lawyers with experience in Bangladeshi citizenship cases have told the BBC that under Bangladesh law, a UK national like Ms Begum, if born to a Bangladeshi parent, is automatically a Bangladeshi citizen. That means that such a person would have dual nationality.

If the person remains in the UK, their Bangladeshi citizenship remains in existence but dormant.

Under this "blood line" law, Bangladeshi nationality and citizenship lapse when a person reaches the age of 21, unless they make efforts to activate and retain it.

Edited February 22, 2023 by tonyh29

[Davkaus]

1 minute ago, tonyh29 said:

I read here that after the age of 21 the bloodline citizenship expires unless you specifically apply otherwise  , but i don't know how accurate this statement is 

 

 

 

Interesting, so theoretically she still had it at 19 when she was stripped of her British citizenship, presumably with the onus on her to secure her Bangladeshi citizenship and no duty on the UK government to assure she wouldn't be left stateless by her own inaction.

I still think it's fairly poor to rely on a technicality of someone being a theoretical citizen of elsewhere despite being born and resident here for most of their life and encouraging a "fastest finger first" style approach to denaturalising people,, but there's no recognition in law of that so what do I know  

[StefanAVFC]

The law debate also disregards the real reason behind it anyway, Javid wanting to look tough on Muslims. Much the same a la Patel and Braverman being so anti-immigration.

[chrisp65]

Do we know what punishment the Canadian spy got, for smuggling children to ISIS?

[StefanAVFC]

4 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Canadian

The key word here showing what punishment he didn't get.

[tonyh29]

 

14 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Do we know what punishment the Canadian spy got, for smuggling children to ISIS?

the Turkish court  that tried him gave him 26 years  I believe  ?

 

[Anthony]

Interesting viewpoint on Begum from David Allen Green.

Note to mods - I know it's a screenshot, but his tweets are protected, so I can't share the link. Here is the link to his profile.